WASHINGTON – On the day when terrorists hijacked jumbo jets and crashed them like missiles into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the country scrambled to protect itself.

Most state and local officials had been through numerous tabletop drills and planning sessions with the federal government to prepare for such a jolting attack. But Maine’s leading seaport was left out of the loop that fateful day, according to Capt. Jeff Monroe, transportation director for Portland, who testified on Thursday before a Senate panel.

“There was no unified high level federal command structure, no common communications among federal, state, municipal and private entities,” he said. “Only the professionalism of local governmental officials working together with private entities prevented a bad situation from getting worse.”

Monroe’s testimony, before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans and Fisheries, was part of a broader effort to identify ways to improve seaport security, something Congress is now eyeing as part of its push to beef up domestic security.

Subcommittee chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as well as Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said they were sure that security at the nation’s 360 seaports would soon be strengthened and coordinated.

“We know full well that the world has changed and seaport security cannot be taken for granted,” said Snowe.

The emergency of Sept. 11 resulted in the U.S. Coast Guard ordering fishing fleets back to port. Passenger ships were diverted to other ports and faced with rapidly changing rules. If the attack had taken place during the height of winter, the fact that nine oil tankers were ordered to stay at sea could have caused another emergency: a looming shortage in heating oil from Maine to Canada.

Customs officials at one point decided to inspect the living quarters of a U.S. registered vessel as the Immigration and Naturalization Service cleared out an entire cruise liner. Both ships were left without crews.

The bottom line? “No guidance or coordination,” Monroe said. “Each federal agency works with its own set of protocols.”

What’s more, the nation’s transportation systems in general seemed to be overlooked. Terrorists may soon take note of that oversight for possible attacks in the future, Monroe cautioned.

Airports around the country were shut down for nearly four days, but other modes of transit that could be potential targets or turned into weapons of mass destruction, continued running. Trains – many containing chemical cars – rolled through metropolitan Portland. Trucks and buses moved cargo and passengers as they do every day without restriction.

Hoping to shore up the lines of communication and coordinate responses to emergencies, Snowe has introduced legislation aimed at creating a new deputy secretary of security at the Department of Transportation. The measure was adopted as part of the Aviation Security Act approved 100-0 by the Senate on Thursday.

Snowe also is backing plans to bolster seaport security that focus on coordination, cooperation, and communications.

“We need to know their vulnerabilities, remedy those vulnerabilities, and ask each port to develop a response plan for contingencies – with federal guidance as to when to implement them,” Snowe said in her opening statement.

Snow also called for better information about the tracking of vessels and cargo in U.S. waters. Such information would be coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard which would detail “where everyone’s at, where they’re headed and what they’re doing in our waters at any given time in any given place.”

Snowe’s comments endorsed a suggestion made at the hearing by U.S. Coast Guard Adm. James Loy, who requested access to new technology and intelligence products “to make us infinitely more aware as we have never been in the past.”